


Brunch

by HotCocoaaa



Series: Snacktime. [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: But it's okay we've got Alison to keep him on track, Follow up to part 1, Gen, Luther deals with confrontation badly, No Apocalypse, The apocolypse doesn't exactly instill good food habits, Why exactly Five ate that spider, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 09:33:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18070850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HotCocoaaa/pseuds/HotCocoaaa
Summary: It wasn’t even lunch yet before they had him cornered.“Five, we just want to know why you did it.”“Why are you all so concerned? This happened hours ago?“You ate a spider, goddammit! You know how terrified of those things you used to be?”"Was I?"In which the Hargreaves siblings get the answer they demand. It's not exactly what they expect.





	Brunch

**Author's Note:**

> Follow up to part 1! My special Hell Writer said, completely seriously might I add, _"make it a angst and explain about him nearly starving to death during the apocalypse"_ so I'm running with it. May or may not have a tri-part delving into cannibalism who knows :)
> 
> *Holy SHIT y'alls comments on Mid-morning im whEEZING

It wasn’t even lunch yet before they had him cornered.

“Five, we just want to know why you did it.”

“Why are you all so concerned? This happened hours ago?” Five protested, glaring up at Alison from over his book. It was a modern book on physics, published that year, and he’d just gotten started on it when three out of his seven siblings had ambushed him in the living room.

Diego had stared him down as if Five himself _was_ the devil, arms crossed and foot a-tapping, while Luther explained that Klaus was getting Vanya and Ben so the could all sit down and have a ‘family meeting.’

Five had been confused as to why, at first, though he’d quickly come to realize why.

Alison still looked a little green in the face.

“You ate a spider, goddammit! You know how terrified of those things you used to be?” Diego exclaimed, throwing his hands out.

“Was I?” Five murmured, looking off to the side as he tapped his chin. “Huh. Can’t remember.” He shrugged. Diego closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, no doubt counting down in his mind from ten. Five smirked. Poor guy.

“You- you seriously don’t remember? You used to teleport out of the house if you saw one and refuse to come back in for hours, no matter the season or the weather,” Alison said, doubtful. "Once, you stood outside in the rain for over three hours because we found a brown recluse in your bedroom." Five tapped his right fist to left palm in understanding.

“Ohh, yes, I remember that.” He grinned, the toothless, cheshire one that always had someone praying to some god, somewhere. “It’s really been a long time, huh?”

Klaus, from the other couch, covered a jittery laugh through a cough, smothering his face with a cushion. The squishy ice pack he had pressed against his head lurched to the side in a very ominous fashion.

“Diego,” Five started, dog tagging one corner of his page before he closed his book, “why are you so upset about this? Did you know that spider personally, or something? Because if you all wouldn’t mind, I’d like to get back to relativity.”

“Upset? Upset!” Diego sputtered, slamming his fists down on the coffee table as he moved to sit down next to Alison. Alison sighed, Vanya dropped her head to her hands, and Luther looked over to their fathers portrait, as if Reginald would materialize out of thin air to end Luther himself. “I’m just glad it wasn’t poisonous,” the man muttered, Alison nodding in agreement.

“You walked into the kitchen, half asleep, ate a _fucking wolf spider_ , and then just drank your coffee like _nothing happened!_ That's- that's _beyond_ fucked up, Five! What in gods name would possess you to _eat_ a _spider_?” Diego exclaimed, tone not angry but filled with anxiety, the man punctuating every stressed word with a bang on the coffee table. The glass coasters clicked dangerously.

Five raised a brow.

“Are you done yet?”

Diego glared.

“Look, Five, I know were all a little mad, but...you, well, you did eat a spider. That’s...not exactly normal. In any regard.” Vanya toned, one side of her nose scrunched up in mild disgust at the mention of the atrocity.

Five sat back, thinking.

Huh.

It had been a good while since he’d thought about normal vs not normal. Was eating anything edible really not normal? It’d been so long since he’d been surrounded by proper food that it made sense to him, but to the others….

“Not to mention you could have hurt yourself, Five,” Luther interjected, stuffy overcoat back in it’s rightful place on his bulky shoulders. “What if it had been poisonous? What then? Have Mom pump your stomach? You can’t exactly risk a hospital visit, you know.” Luther stared down his nose at Five, giving a pointed look, and combined with the ‘holier-than-thou’ condescending ‘I’m-trying-to-look-out-for-you‘ voice, Five bristled.

“It was a wolf spider, they’re not harmful.”

“That’s besides the point-”

“Oh really, then what is the point, _Number One?_ ”

“Listen here, _Five_ , we’re just trying to help you-!”

“BOYS!” Alison yelled, sitting up straight, her arms holding tension as she made fists. Her shout cut through the beginning argument, killing it, and she gave Luther and Five both a reproachful look.

“We’re all _adults_ here, and if you want to act otherwise, then go upstairs.” Her tone brokered no negotiation.

“Alison’s right; we all agreed to do better at this family thing. So we each need to pull our own weight.” Vanya chimed in, determination still sparking in her iris,’ even after three weeks of rather pathetic failures for up keeping the promise they’d all made together.

Five look to the bar, and longed for a martini.

“I apologize, Luther.” He ground out, stiffly.

“‘M sorry, too.” Luther returned, and was that a hint aggression Five detected? He narrowed his eyes, heard Vanya's pointed cough, and backed down.

“So then what is the point of this little family meeting?” Five asked, blowing his bangs out of his face with a puff of air.

“To get down to why in the name of gods sweet little face you ate a spider.” Klaus helpfully informed, and everyone was a little confused with his analogy. Five raised his book sarcastically, in place of an alcoholic beverage, and just as sarcastically responded, “Thank you, Klaus.”

Klaus stuck a thumbs up in the air. The ice pack fell to the floor. Five rolled his eyes.

“So why did you do it, then? There’s perfectly good cereal in the pantry, y’know?” Diego asked, strained, tapping a finger on the wooden, knee-high table in front of him, looking at his brother.

Five shrugged.

“There was a perfectly good spider on the table. What’s the difference?”

Diego made a high pitched sound, caught halfway between a strangle and a hysterical giggle, mouthing ‘what the fuck,’ as he looked up to the heavens.

Five was astounded.

“Do none of you idiots even remotely remember a thing I say, or do you all just have the memory span of a goldfish?” Five scoffed. Luther began to glower again.

“I’m pretty sure I told all of you I spent, what, _thirty years_ in an apocalypse? Does that have any meaning to _any_ of you, at all?” Five asked, looking around the room to his siblings. Luther was still glowering, and looking like he was chewing on a response, and not a particularly good one.

Vanya was looking at him intently, probably thinking hard, Klaus was whispering to Ben on another couch, not particularly caring about the present conversation. He seemed more focused on whatever thing only he could see that was somewhere in the vicinity of the coffee table, regardless.

Alison looked thoughtful, but he could tell his meaning had gone over her head. To be fair, somethings you had to live through before they occurred to you as an issue.

“Well what exactly does that mean, Five? Not all of us are mind readers, here.” Luther snarked, evidently still provoked from earlier. Five rolled his eyes, and dropped his head to his hands, muttering _“jesus christ,”_ as he went, unable to stop the tremors starting in his shoulders.

“No, seriously, Five. You can’t just dump some vague analogy on us-” “Luther,” Alison interrupted quietly, but Luther bulldozed on, his voice rising to a shout. “And just expect everyone to understand-!”

 _“I was starving to death!_ ” Five yelled, and a hush settled over the room.

“God _god_ , you people are dense- What do you think the apocalypse means, huh? The only thing I had to eat was non-perishables and the damn _cockroaches_ that survived!" Five spit acridly. "I lived over thirty years in a _wasteland_ , Luther, how long do you think canned food lasts with half of an ozone layer left, _huh?_ ” Five shouted, breathing hard. He scrubbed his hands over his face, glaring at the carpet for a moment.

“You know what? Let’s look, shall we?” He said, and with a quiet pop he winked out, jumping to the kitchen to grab the nearest canned item in the pantry before jumping back to the living room.

“Here we have- oh, canned beans, what a _luxury_.” Five growled, tossing the can from his left hand to his right, looking at the expiration date stamped into the aluminum metal.

“June eighth, 2023.” He looked up, glaring at all his siblings either shocked or mildly sickened faces. Vanya and Klaus just looked sad.

“This was made in 2018- you want to know how many years five is out of thirty? It’s not even _seventeen percent!_ So yes, actually, I would call eating a perfectly good spider, _perfectly normal_.”

With that, Five tossed the can carelessly to the ground where it rolled, coming to a stop as it hit a couch leg. He collapsed like a marionette with it's strings cut back onto the couch, sighing as he went, one hand over his eyes and headache already starting to form.

“I...Five...That didn’t even occur to me,” Alison murmured, and she sounded surprised, even mildly angry with herself. Luther had the decency to remain silent, at least.

Something hard hitting something else hard and a hushed “Ow!” made him raise an eyebrow, lifting a finger to watch Alison glare at Luther as the man rubbed the back of his head.

He looked thoroughly chastised.

“Five…” He started, and Five lifted his hand off of his face, but didn’t bother to sit up from his slouched position.

“...I’m sorry. That was, insensitive, of me. I could have been better about, uh, about asking you to explain.” Luther apologized, and Five had to admit, he sounded sincere. He nodded, tired.

“It’s fine,” He murmured, and they were all silent for a few moments.

“Did you seriously eat cockroaches to survive?” Diego asked, looking both pained and beyond disgusted, not of Five but for him, and Five could only throw his head back and laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> So about that ghost spider,,


End file.
